History Paper

Slavery remains one of the most debated topics among politics and ethics even in today's society. However, today slavery does not play a key role in deciding our political desires as it did in the 1800's. Although, slavery has occurred throughout time, dating from the Roman Empire to present-day Africa, slavery is an issue that affects people from all over the world. Numerous debates have taken place about the effects of slavery on the African-American community and whether or not the act of slavery is ethical or not. Slavery is a cruel method to keep people against their will to perform strenuous work without discretion.

Historians who have analyzed slavery have concluded that the labor conducted by slaves in America is less hazardous than the slaves in the Caribbean. The primary reason for this was because of the type of crop grown, cotton. Despite this generalization, slavery still affects a person physically and mentally. Many of the slaves who worked on cotton plantations suffered from arched backs and bloody limbs. Some slave owners even worked slaves to death, leaving their bodies to rot in the fields. Long hours during harvest time prevented many slaves from attaining proper diets and sleeping hours. Slave owners seldom provided an adequate meal for the slaves.

Slavery often split families apart, giving no hope for a comfortable community life. Slaves were forced to live in log cabins, in which they were forced to forge bonds with other slaves and create a type of nuclear family. Slaves in result despised their owners and developed a mentality of hate towards plantation owners. According to Stanley Elkins Slavery, the plantation life imitated that of a prison.

Plantations rarely gave slaves an opportunity to develop their own social and cultural lives. However, music, language, and religion were built. Music gives a fine example of the treatment of slaves. Music created a politically challenging atmosphere that lifted the morale of slaves. A hint of segregation occurred in the church, where sermons were restrained in the presence of white people. This was one of the principal reasons blacks withdrew from white churches after the Civil War and formed their own.

McPherson set out to learn what inspired Civil War soldiers. Reading more than 25,000 letters and diaries, he compiled a representative portrait of a critical segment of the war's soldiers. His 647 Federals and 429 Confederates closely reflect the age, marital status, branch of service, and geographical distribution of their armies. Not surprisingly, the sample is biased toward middle-class and upper-class, native-born men who enlisted in the early years of the war. While this slant primarily reflects this group's literacy, McPherson points out that the bias actually served his study. His sample soldiers sustained dramatically higher mortality rates than their armies as a whole--17 percent of his Federals died or were mortally wounded in combat as compared to a five percent rate in the Union army; 29 percent of his Confederates died or were mortally wounded in combat as compared to an 11 or ...